BREAKING NEWS -
Long Beach Hits Record Low Water Use in August;
19% Below 10-Year Average; City is Nearly
10% Below 10-Year Average YTD
City has 8th record setting month since September
’07
That was the headline in the press release from Ryan Alsop of the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners this week so the question comes to mind, How is L.A. doing?
OK, that was too easy no double-doubles for getting it right.
The Department of Water and Power numbers aren’t in for August but in July total water use in L.A. was up .4 % over a year earlier but down 3.8 % in June from the previous June.
But don’t blame homeowners who got socked with a whopping rate increase. Single family home water use fell for the 12th straight month, by 4.7 % in June and 4.5 % in July.
In other words, water use is actually up in the city except for the efforts of the people most despised by City Hall — homeowners. Maybe that explains the strategy for using recycled toilet water for home use: It will cut down a lot more on how much water is used.
Long Beach has taken a different strategy by imposing tough but sensible conservations measures 12 months ago and engaging in a massive campaign to inform the public about the need to conserve water.
The results are fantastic:
August 2008 water demand was 18.9 % below
the 10-year average and July was down 18 %. Water demand overall is running 9 % below the 10-year average.
The State Assembly passed Gil Cedillo’s SB1301, giving foreign nationals living in the U.S. illegally financial aid for college, the state’s version of the “Dream Act,” despite the fact that middle-class families are struggling and their kids often must choose cheaper colleges than they could get into, like the Cal State or community colleges.
There is only so much financial aid money available and the State Assembly is ignoring the fact that we have a huge deficit already. It’s not enough for them that homeowners are paying for the kids of illegals and other immigrants in K-12 education (Latino kids are half the State student population vs. 20% nationally, and make up 3/4 of LA’s). Urge Gov. Schwarzenegger to veto this bill as he did a similar bill in 2006.
Why would anyone believe the word of the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners? Is it really water conservation that is impacting this year’s water usage reduction? It’s been a cool year in coastal Long Beach. Irrigation needs are less. Does anybody really believe that Long Beach residents aren’t hosing down their patios and driveways? Does anybody really believe that Long Beach people are taking less showers?
You must be a fool to believe the PR from Long Beach. Look at the Long Beach City website. Do you see any urgent notices to conserve water?
http://www.longbeach.gov/default.asp
Yes, it’s been a very dry year. It’s been a very hot summer for inland Los Angeles. No wonder we use more irrigation water in inland Los Angeles.
The water conservation movement is a pile of crap. It’s part of a PR campaign to convince us to use “toilet water to tap”. If they really wanted us to conserve water then they would require grey water home systems to irrigate our landscape.
Don’t be a fool. Don’t trust anything that you read in our local papers.
Where does all our water go??? Well, we dump it, along with the bromate it contains, into the ocean.
http://www.scpr.org/news/stories/2008/05/07/18_nahai_2way_050708.html
From: 89.3 KPCC Southern California Public Radio
Melting Snow Filling Silver Lake Reservoir
May 07, 2008
Shirley Jahad: Department of Water and Power officials today turned on the tap to refill Silver Lake Reservoir. Officials had dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of water and emptied Silver Lake and Elysian reservoirs after finding levels of a potentially harmful chemical, bromate, in the water. Joining me now is DWP chief David Nahai. Good afternoon, sir.
David Nahai: Good afternoon, Shirley.
Jahad: First off, tell us what’s happening there at Silver Lake now, today.
Nahai: Well, as you said, the reservoir had been drained, and we’d promised to fill it up again so that it would be full in order to meet water supply needs during the summer months, and really, in order to return a landmark to the Silver Lake community. And today, we did that by, as you said, turning on the spigot and allowing water to flow back into the reservoir.
Jahad: It’s going to take a couple of weeks or more to fill it up. Where’s all this new water coming from?
Nahai: From the Eastern Sierras. This is snow melt. It is the most pristine, the most delicious water that we have, I think probably the best water anywhere, and it will take about 20 days to fill the reservoir. The reservoir, in terms of its size, is something like 96 football fields.
Jahad: There is a near record low snow pact now, according to recent measurements, so what’s the effect of taking that to fill Silver Lake?
Nahai: Well, it’s going to the city’s water supply. Instead of using it in other places in the city, we’re using it in order to refill the Silver Lake Reservoir, I hope much to the delight of the communities of the central and south L.A. who have the benefit of it. comment: my emphasis.
Jahad: Now, I understand the bromate got there in the first place, it wasn’t by any accident or any dumping, it was a natural process of exposure to sunlight and a chemical reaction in the water. How can you ensure whatever chemical happened before won’t happen again?
Nahai: It’s, yes, a natural reaction, but a very, very unusual one. As a matter of fact, it appears quite unprecedented. Nobody was able to discover an instance of this happening anywhere else. And what happened here was that this was a combination of chlorine in the water, bromide, which is benign, acting together with sunlight in order to create the chemical bromate. And the way that we’re going to prevent that from happening is by shielding the water from sunlight in the future during the time that Silver Lake will remain in service as a water supply resource. comment: my emphasis.
Jahad: How are you shielding Silver Lake from sunlight?
Nahai: It’s going to be done by what are called “birds balls.” (laughs) And I know that that sounds terrible. But bird balls will be used actually on Ivanhoe. During the period of time that Silver Lake will remain as a water supply resource, it will not be covered, but in terms of long term use, if it were going to remain part of the city’s water supply, it would have to be covered as Ivanhoe is going to be, with there– with these black balls that float on top of the water and shield it from sunlight to a sufficient degree to prevent the formation of bromate.
comment: my above emphasis. Also, Silver Lake Reservoir is generally not used for water supply. No bird balls there. Yet, it gets the refilled, fresh water (political connections?). The adjacent Ivanhoe reservoir is used for water supply. It gets the bird balls.
End of my comment.
Jahad: Where did the nearly billion gallons of the contaminated water go?
Nahai: To the extent that we could, we used it for reuse purposes, but most of it, I’m afraid, was discharged into the L.A. River and out to the ocean. I do want to say that we could have possibly blended the water with other water and rendered it possibly usable for drinking purposes, but we made the decision, I made the decision, in the interest of public perception and public safety, that it was preferable, as hard as it was, to not use that water for drinking purposes.
Jahad: I understand some 600,000 people in parts of central and south Los Angeles use the Silver Lake Reservoir for their tap water. What is your message to them in terms of safety and the water?
Nahai: Well, I think my message to them is going to be, rather than have any mother in central and south L.A. have any doubt about the water that her kids are drinking, we decided just to dump that water. The other message that I would like to give to the people of Los Angeles as a whole is that it is tested, constantly. Our water is tested something like 350,000 times a year. That’s about a thousand times a day, to make sure that Angelenos enjoy the safest, most high quality water anywhere.
Jahad: Thank you very much, David Nahai
Nahai: Thank you for having me.
Jahad: We’ve been talking with David Nahai, the head of the L.A. Department of Water and Power. I’m Shirley Jahad.
Nahai should say,
“How do you say it? Ah, yes. A bait and switch.”
Want to conserve water? Here are two easy steps to do so:
1. Stop increasing the City’s population density. That means:
a. Stop granting variances that allow increased density; and
b. Stop subsidizing construction projects that increase density.
2. Enforce existing laws that would reduce density:
a. Stop letting people turn garages into apartments;
b. Stop letting people cram five families into apartments intended for one or two occupants; and
c. Stop aiding and abetting illegal immigration by, among other things, giving Section 8 housing subsidies to illegal aliens, who are not entitled to it in any event.
You don’t need shorter showers or smaller yards. You need a new Mayor.
Walter Moore
Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles
http://WalterMooreForMayor.com